Check-in no.2
Come buy the original zines in time to Valentine's Day! 2/9
Writing this check in mostly to let those in New York City know that I’ll be selling the original three I Love New York zines and a few ILNY-inspired Valentine’s Day postcards at Colbo in the Lower East Side on February 9th, just in time for V-Day. 6pm to 9pm on Friday night! I’ll be pouring wine too! Come say hi!
Reading list
As a tangential assignment for myself, I’ve been brushing up on my film history of the 1960s, as that’s the era we’re still currently getting through. Here are a few of the books I’ve read recently:
Pictures at a Revolution
By Mark Harris
This is the account of the five unlikely Best Picture nominees of 1968 and how they got there. I picked up this book specifically to learn more about the intricate shifts in the Motion Picture Production Code during the 1960s, but the main focus of the book is the road to the Oscars for Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and Doctor Doolittle. Even if you don’t think you’re particularly interested in any of those films, the cast of characters that is brought together in an impressively comprehensive account of the decade is well worth the read. I particularly loved the dramatic account of Rex Harrison behind the scenes of Doctor Doolittle and Dustin Hoffman’s underdog road to The Graduate (same with Warren Beatty’s to Bonnie and Clyde for that matter). The book is part behind-the-scenes tell-all, part nerdy film history. It will also be featured in the next newsletter as it touches on the making of Promise Her Anything (1966).
New Yorker Theater book(s)
The next books have the same central focus but are told from two different perspectives. I can’t remember what film I was researching or maybe it was just a look through the New York Times movie section that brought me to discover the New Yorker Theater, but here I arrived. The New Yorker Theater was started by husband and wife Dan and Toby Talbot and ran from 1960-1973 playing independent and foreign films both sourced and distributed by Dan and Toby (the New Yorker Theater then added New Yorker Films, their distribution wing in 1965). Toby worked as the education editor of El Diario de Nueva York and taught Spanish literature at Columbia College and New York University during these years, while Dan devoted his whole life to the pursuit of film exhibition. The two would travel the world together screening films for distribution in the US, tag-team festivals, and decide what to bring to their theater, which brought some of the greatest art house films of their time (and all time) to audiences in New York. They both wrote books on the theater and their experience. I read Dan’s first which I flew through. It’s an incredible account of a career and proximity to film history in the making and New York in the 1960s. The book is broken up into sections on various aspects of his life and work, which spans his time with New Yorker Theater, New York Films, and his final theater Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Toby’s book takes a more how-to approach at times but also tells a more narrative story of their history-making cinema space.
In Love With Movies From New Yorker Films to Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
By Daniel Talbot (author), Toby Talbot (editor)
The New Yorker Theater: And Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies
Toby Talbot (Author) Martin Scorsese (Foreword by)
Letterboxd
I’m adding the films of I Love New York to Letterboxd so you can follow along as you go! The list features all the films on the list, not just those in this newsletter.
Next up… Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron in Promise Her Anything and an ode to Elaine May!
More romance to come…
xx Paris